As a young developer (early 20's) I think Java's lack of usage in webdev has to do with several "problems".
1.) Java has the rep of being bloated and slow. (At least when compared to C/C++)
2.) Related to #1, almost all the tools the majority of webdevers use are written in C/C++ and not Java. For instance, Apache, Nginx, Redis, MongoDB, MySQL, SQLite, Webkit, V8 - which gives me the feeling that using/improving C/C++ gives me a better understanding of my toolset whereas Java doesn't have any perceived added benefit.
3.) For Application Development itself, using scripting languages like Ruby/Python/PHP makes for BLAZING fast development especially when using a framework like Rails.
4.) The LAMP Stack (if implemented correctly) can handle a LOT of traffic, I'm talking millions of daily users.
So this leaves almost every web developer (I'd say around 98%) with no reason to use Java - ever. Why should they? With the current tools, I can build highly scalable apps extremely fast and because I'm using scripting languages I'm free to experiment, mix/match, combine, and build new tools in innovative ways. Also, I think because Java is associated with the group of C/C++ and "lower level" languages it really does loose cred simply because it can't compete in effeciency terms with those languages.
Personally, as a programmer who loves C, Ruby and Haskell (so yea I'm biased but who isn't?) just looking at the Syntax of Java makes me seriously wonder what Sun was thinking.
yes, but if you noticed I'm comparing Java to C in terms of program language speed. I'm comparing Java to Ruby in development speed NOT language speed, I thought this was obvious... sorry, If I wasn't clear enough above.
You were clear, but if you're going to compare languages you can't cherry pick which features to compare. You compared Java to C performance and then Java to Ruby in terms of expressiveness. Since Ruby does not have the performance of C and C does not have the expressiveness of Ruby it's not really a fair comparison to Java.
So this leaves almost every web developer (I'd say around 98%) with no reason to use Java - ever. Why should they? With the current tools, I can build highly scalable apps extremely fast and because I'm using scripting languages I'm free to experiment, mix/match, combine, and build new tools in innovative ways. Also, I think because Java is associated with the group of C/C++ and "lower level" languages it really does loose cred simply because it can't compete in effeciency terms with those languages.
Personally, as a programmer who loves C, Ruby and Haskell (so yea I'm biased but who isn't?) just looking at the Syntax of Java makes me seriously wonder what Sun was thinking.